


Sublimity

by TheClassyCorvid



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheClassyCorvid/pseuds/TheClassyCorvid
Summary: Robert watched Victor's back and thought too much.
Relationships: Victor Frankenstein/Robert Walton
Kudos: 13





	Sublimity

The humid breeze ruffled the curtains like a sigh. The air in the bedroom was muggy, smelling of grass and tomorrow’s rain and green, all wet and suffocating and warm.

Robert stayed in place. The sheets were tacky against his arm. His cheek hurt against the pillowcase, prickling hot. He could roll out of bed and grope his way to the window to close the shutters. It wasn’t that far. Just a few steps. It’d take seconds.

He couldn’t rouse himself to do it. If he moved, he might jostle Victor. Discomfort didn’t matter that much. 

The glow from the chip of a moon filtered through the treetops and past the curtains. Tessellated shadows drifted across the wall with hypnotic underwater slowness. Light wavered over Victor’s back. The silk of his nightdress glittered like a mirror where it bunched up into big creases at his hips and elbow.

Robert stared, caught in a dream. His thoughts played on the wind like dandelion puffs, small and cottony and meaningless. His eyes traced the hazy outline of Victor’s body that blurred under the light. Down the shoulder. Along the gentle slope of the side. Ascending a demure degree at the waist. He was still thin. The hand-me-down nightdress from Robert billowed off him like a flour sack. Somehow he made it elegant.

“What’s keeping you awake?”

Victor’s whisper made a chill sail down Robert’s arms. He gazed through Victor’s back. The words rolled in a lazy tumble through his mind. All there on newsprint, somehow in big bold block letters, the way he saw his own voice. None of them hit the chute that would lead to his mouth.

Through his daze, he reached. His shoulder creaked by his ear. He tracked his finger down Victor’s back. The vertebrae were chunky jigsaw pieces. His finger bumped over them, skimming over silk.

“How did you know I couldn’t sleep?” Robert said at last. His tongue weighed heavy in his mouth. Saying the words scattered some of the fog. His skull hugged his brain too tightly. It ached.

“Your breathing,” Victor said. 

He let Robert continue skating his finger up and down his backbone. The friction of the nightdress fizzled into static against Robert’s skin. He didn’t stop.

“What’s on your mind, Captain?”

Victor’s stuffy voice went husky, with just enough grit and gravel to compel Robert to close his eyes and relish it. If he could listen to Victor talk forever, he’d have no complaints. He considered himself personally blessed that Victor was indeed inclined to talk forever. He spoke slowly, riffling to find the perfect words, enunciating past his teeth and the leftover French that lent an inquisitive singsong to his voice.

“You,” Robert said. It came out wispy, on the tail end of a longing sigh. “You’re always in my thoughts.”

Silence limped. Robert stopped caressing Victor’s back. His fingers furled. His face burned as though he’d washed with icy water and scoured dry with burlap. 

“I’m sorry,” Victor said. It was smaller. “With your permission, I can retire to the parlor sofa.”

A jolt made Robert bring his knees in closer. 

“Stay. Please.” He splayed his fingers over Victor’s side, balanced his flattened palm there for a second, then clutched. His heart throbbed in his throat, escaping the cage of his ribs. He tasted it.

“I meant that only in your favor. I can’t sleep because I’m overwhelmed. It’s no inconvenience. It’s the most wonderful feeling I could ever conceive.”

Victor’s shoulders hitched up, then relaxed. He hummed a soft key of doubt.

“You’re ever-sentimental. Hasn’t that rush of feelings yet grown dull? You know that every night will pass the same. The sun rises every morning with all the same majesty, but we expect it, and think little of it.”

An ache settled in Robert’s chest, just over the wedge of his breastbone, caving in.

“Has it grown dull for you?” he asked. He swallowed. His thumb smoothed back and forth across Victor’s side. When he noticed, he stopped. 

Victor inhaled. It was sharp and uncertain. His side moved under Robert’s hand. Robert let go. His fingers fidgeted over air, fretting for some contact to keep him tethered. The inches of mattress separated them more than if they’d been on opposite sides of the world.

“Victor,” he implored. He tucked his fingers into Victor’s hair. They tightened.

“When one lives in a homely cabin in the countryside, does the vast expanse of distant purple mountains not have a powerful appeal?” The poetry was a murmur, as though Victor were wearily reciting it, and it had lost all meaning to him. “Or, if one spends his days languishing by the forest, can he be blamed for yearning to see the rage of a churning ocean?”

The ache gnawed away the cartilage of Robert’s ribs, bringing them inward to squash his lungs like a corset laced too tight. He buried his fingers deeper in Victor’s hair, arranging the long pieces on the pillow.

“I am your countryside,” he said softly.

“The sublime beckons me, Walton, but I’m afraid I can never reach it. I’ll wander for the rest of my life.”

When Victor spoke with this gravitas, a knot jerked in Robert’s throat that scratched like a stale biscuit going down the wrong way. His head was waterlogged.

He was a savior. Wasn’t he? 

He was Victor’s sole confidant, nursing all his secrets close to his heart. Despite everything, he looked at him and saw someone beautiful. Someone who surely deserved everything good that could ever exist. He was Victor’s second chance. His hope. His safety. His shelter. 

He felt like a captor.

“I love you,” he said in a tremulous whisper, reverently, because he didn’t know what else to say. It broke down the dam and bittersweet relief flooded like puking up a sour meal. He tangled Victor’s hair around his fingers, twisting and knotting the sleek satin until scissors would have been kinder than a comb.

“I love you, Victor,” he said again, more to reassure himself than Victor. Victor never responded anyway.

He lay just the same as he did before. Just as still and stiff. He could have drifted to sleep for all Robert knew. His side rose and fell gently under the baggy white dress.

Robert held his breath. Something hot and goopy pushed against his tonsils, ready to crack like an eggshell. He knew Victor wouldn’t return his sentiment. He hadn’t expected differently. Panic bled into his nerves with no regard to expectation nor sense. His fingers were cold, all the way to the bone.

Maybe Victor heard the way Robert’s breath caught in his throat when the eggshell broke. Maybe he knew already. Robert pressed his lips together until they numbed. The air was sweltering. He needed to close the shutters. He couldn’t. If he stayed like this long enough, watching the block letters run together in his mind in endless apologies, maybe he would sleep.

Victor drew a long, thin breath through his nose, as though he were preparing to deliver himself of a poignant monologue with Shakespearean fervor.

“Kiss me, Walton.”

Robert’s heart flattened with a last flimsy shudder.

Those words weren’t meant for him to say. For all his poise and eloquence, Victor didn’t know how to pronounce them. They should have been warm, wavering with intensity, pleading, passion spilling. But they were staccato. A hollow, tired demand mumbled into the night, as toneless a request as “Shut the door, please.”

He didn’t roll over to face Robert and welcome the kiss. He didn’t move. He still lay on his side, his back to Robert, his hair catching tiny silver stars in the light.

He hadn’t asked for it. It was an offer for Robert’s sake. 

Robert squeezed his eyes shut. 

He pressed his hand to Victor’s back. The heartbeat was shallow against his palm. His hand slid beneath the curtain of long hair, skimming up to his shoulder to grasp it in a lingering pulse before moving to cup his chest. With his arm hooked around Victor, he hauled him into a half-embrace. The blankets rumpled uncomfortably between them.

Robert locked his shoulders tight. Every muscle hardened in a nauseating cramp. He buried his face in Victor’s neck, and all at once his breaths came out in raggedy, shaky huffs that he couldn’t bite back.

He kissed desperately, spurned by a strange, smothering dread that this would be his last chance.

Robert craned his neck and clamped Victor close, packing him into the curve of his body. He fit against him seamlessly, as though he belonged there. Digging his fingers into Victor’s collarbone, he kissed all the skin he could reach, gagging on mouthfuls of hair or nightgown lace, his thoughts reeling and teetering and threatening to dribble hot and sticky from his ears.

If he clung tightly enough and kissed deeply enough, maybe Victor would understand all the things he couldn’t say. 

He suddenly felt that he were watching himself from afar, and was, inexplicably, disappointed.

He was exhausted.

Each fiber of his muscles gave out one by one. His arm slowly went lax. He kept his face against Victor’s neck, cradling his cheek there. It was warm and wet. His heart felt deep within him, small and far away, and its echo was lost in his head. 

“Good night, Walton,” Victor said quietly.

Robert watched the shadows sift blue and purple over the wall. 


End file.
